Befriended by many writers and artists Wojnarowicz started playing in a No-Wave type band called 3 Teens Kill 4 where he was in charge of the sound collages: he played the cassette player through microphone using speeches, news reports, and other found sounds. This use of found objects led to painting on the lids of trashcans and supermarket advertising posters. He created a stencil style that was a perfect match for the urban landscape. At some point he started painting at an abandoned pier. Other artists too would paint down there and it became a gathering place and makeshift guerrilla art gallery.
"Bottom line, if people don't say what they believe, those ideas and feelings get lost. If they are lost often enough, those ideas and feelings never return."
**3 Teens Kill 4’s** //Tell Me Something Good// from their 1984 album No Motive, an experimental cover of the Stevie Wonder-penned, Rufus/Chaka Khan-popularized original, utilized newscast audio on John Hinckley Jr.’s 1981 attempted assassination of Reagan with other found and toy sounds, atonal singing by Hair and Wojnarowicz and synth drone. This beat-laden cover seems to fall in lockstep with Wojnarowicz’s radical historical mission, juxtaposing the original incarnation of Tell Me Something Good as a coy love song with the concepts of Hinckley Jr.’s erotomaniacal obsession with Jodie Foster and Reagan’s role in impeding research into and treatment of AIDS by either downplaying and ignoring the disease then known as the “gay plague”.
POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA is inspired by the work and writings of outspoken gay artist David Wojnarowicz, this film dramatizes three periods in his life: abused childhood, New York street hustler, and adult artist on the road, creating a powerful look at growing up gay in America.
Befriended by many writers and artists Wojnarowicz started playing in a No-Wave type band called 3 Teens Kill 4 where he was in charge of the sound collages: he played the cassette player through microphone using speeches, news reports, and other found sounds. This use of found objects led to painting on the lids of trashcans and supermarket advertising posters. He created a stencil style that was a perfect match for the urban landscape. At some point he started painting at an abandoned pier. Other artists too would paint down there and it became a gathering place and makeshift guerrilla art gallery.